Navanethem "Navi" Pillay (born 23 September 1941) is a South African jurist who served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014.

[7] In 1981, Pillay applied to and attended Harvard University under the foreign exchange Harvard-South Africa Scholarship Program[7] and earned her Master of Law.

[8] Pillay was nominated and confirmed to the High Court of South Africa by the Judicial Service Commission under supervision of the bar association in 1995.

[9] Towards the end of her term, the Minister of Justice Abdullah Omar and President Mandela submitted her name as a nominee for the U.N. Security Council and a judge on the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 1995.

[7] In 2003, the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statue of the ICC elected her as a judge in the International Criminal Court and served as member of the Appeals Chamber until 2008.

[7] Despite their personal beliefs, teachers were strictly prohibited from addressing politics, including apartheid, out of fear that the school administration would retaliate.

When she was 10 years old, Pillay wrote an in-class essay on how black individuals received heavier sentences than their white counterparts in South African courts using information she had overheard from her parents and teachers since she could not access radios or newspapers.

[7] She filed for an exemption with Minister of Justice, calling the office directly after receiving no response and was then able to return to Natal where she could finish her degree.

[1] Pillay has spent much of her legal career advocating for the preservation of international human rights law, with a special focus on crimes regarding rape and sexual violence.

[10] She was very involved in the anti-apartheid movement, defending political opponents of apartheid in their cases against the state for poor prison conditions and the wrongful use of torture.

[7] Pillay then applied to and attended Harvard University in 1981 under the foreign exchange Harvard-South Africa Scholarship Program and earned her Master of Law.

[18] As a member of the Women's National Coalition, she contributed to the inclusion in South Africa's Constitution of an equality clause prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of race, religion and sexual orientation.

[7] The Judicial Service Commission is a group of jurists hand picked by the President to screen incoming candidates on the High Court of South Africa and compile the list of nominees.

[16][23] In 1995, the Minister of Justice Abdullah Omar and President Mandela submitted Pillay's name as a nominee for the U.N. Security Council and a judge on the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

[25] Her tenure on the ICTR is best remembered for her role in the landmark trial of Jean-Paul Akayesu, which established that rape and sexual assault could constitute acts of genocide.

[28] It was during the case that Pillay was able to set an international legal precedent which considered rape as a form of genocide and a crime against humanity.

[31][32] Pillay also served on the Prosecutor v Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, Hassan Ngeze trial regarding the role the Radio Television Libre des Mille Collins (RTLM) and the Kangura magazine in spreading hate propaganda against the Tutsis.

[7] The criminal tribunal found that Ferdinand Nahimana was indicted for the direct and public incitement to commit genocide while working at the radio station RTLM.

[33] Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza was also indicted for the direct and public incitement to commit genocide at the RTLM and for his work with the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic.

[34] Pillay garnered international recognition for her work as a judge on the ICTR and caught the attention of the members of the Women's Caucus for Gender Justice during the late 1990s.

[36] Pillay was nominated to serve on the International Criminal Court's Appeal Chambers by the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute on 7 February 2003.

[38] One of the first cases to appear in the International Criminal Court was The Prosecutor v Thomas Lubanga Dyilo for enlisting children under 15 years old to the armed militias inciting violence between the Hema and Lendu ethnic groups in the Ituri, north-eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

[39] While Dyilo was convicted for his war crimes in 2012, Pillay served on the appeals chamber during the pre-trial phase of the case from 2006 to the end of her term in 2008.

[40] On 24 July 2008, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon nominated Pillay to succeed Louise Arbour as High Commissioner for Human Rights.

"[45] In August 2014, she criticized the international community over its "paralysis" in dealing with the more than three-year old Syrian Civil War, which by 30 April 2014 had resulted in 191,369 deaths.

[57][58] Her criticism of the Sri Lankan government being an authoritarian state,[59] in alleging human rights violations and atrocities committed by them against Tamil civilians at the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, has led the government and its supporters to apportion her own Tamil descent as the only reason for her criticism, a claim she strongly denies.

[62] Her contribution to the 2001 Durban Conference on racism, the Goldstone report, and her steering of the UN Human Rights Council have been criticized as unjust by The Jerusalem Post.

[63] Pillay's claim that Israel was engaged in the "apparent targeting of …children playing", on 23 July 2014, a charge previously denied by IDF spokesmen,[64] has been described by Anne Bayefsky as "incitement to hate".

[65] After reviewing the heavy US contribution to the Iron Dome program, Pillay called for better defense for Gaza, stating that "no such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling".